This invention relates, in general, to a spring mat assembly for upholstered seating, as for a seat base or back, and to a method of fabrication thereof, and has particular reference to that class of seating commonly known as "soft edge" seating.
Certain types of seating constructions in popular use at present, such as for so-called "bucket" seats in automobiles, for instance, as well as for other types of seating, desirably incorporate flexible or soft edge bolster wings which are upwardly or forwardly and outwardly inclined lateral edge portions of the seating surfaces. These bolster wings serve to keep the body of the seated person laterally centered in the seat, thus, contributing to better posture and comfort of the user.
Such seating constructions conventionally incorporate some type of spring decking or a spring mat assembly over which padding and upholstery layers are applied, or in some instances the spring decking is molded or encapsulated directly within a padding material such as natural or synthetic rubber or plastic foam. However, the constructions of the spring decking heretofore employed or proposed for such purpose, to provide the necessary spring yield and to provide the closely spaced supports required for the padding material, and to form and support the bolster wings adequately, generally have been beset with difficulties, such as complicated spring wire structures difficult to fabricate and comprised of many component parts, which often do not lend the spring decking to automatic machine manufacture into an integrated assembly and require instead manual assembly operations such as adds materially to the cost of the spring decking and thus the seat.